In my last post, I mentioned that if Bill Gates were running your business, it would be doing a lot better than it is now for three reasons: 1) Desire to Win, 2) Bigger Thinking, 3) Better Business Skills
Of these, the most important are actually the first two. If you have a massive desire to win and are actively looking for how to make your business grow more (rather than thinking about how to make it shrink less), you can find ways to acquire the business skills you’re missing.
For example, when I work with new clients, I have one major rule. The new client must be highly MOTIVATED.
Here’s why.
If you lay out a perfect game plan to take a business from where it is today to where you want to go tomorrow, if the owner isn’t motivated nothing will happen.
I never take on clients who aren’t super motivated to take their business to the next level. It doesn’t work out well for them and selfishly it screws up my track record.
ALL of my 1:1 coaching clients have TRIPLED their revenues and profits since the beginning of this recession (Jan 2008).
There are three reasons for this track record.
(Note you can see video case studies of a few of my clients on my website at https://www.victorcheng.com/coaching )
- Reason 1: Incredible desire and motivation on their part
- Reason 2: Major investments in improving their business skills
- Reason 3: Disciplined execution of the game plan I developed for them
To their credit, all of them realized they had a very exciting marketplace opportunity they could profit from.
And like Bill Gates, they all realized they were missing some of the skills needed to be successful.
Like Gates, the made acquiring the right skills a super high priority… and it paid off.
In a recession, most business owners cut back on investing in themselves and their business skills.
I think the thinking is that money’s tight and you need to cut expenses wherever possible.
But there’s a huge flaw in that logic.
If your business is growing like crazy, I can see the case for cutting back on acquiring new skills. You could argue that in the short run, they may not be needed (though to keep up a huge growth rate, they are very much needed in the medium run).
If your business is not doing well or not doing as well as you like, this is market feedback that’s telling you your skills are not good enough to win in this environment.
There is no clearer message in business than declining or stagnating revenues. PAY ATTENTION to it.
If this happens to describe your situation, you have two options.
Option 1:
Give up, quit, and shut down your business fast (as opposed to a long drawn out failure that consumes enormous resources, mental energy, and cash) and find something else to do for a living.
This is a legitimate course of action and I have given this advice to people who had businesses that weren’t worth trying to save. Option 2:
Play to win. Invest in yourself and in finding a better way to run your business.
If your business solves a real problem for customers and has something unique/different to offer, you got a real shot at building a great and growing business – regardless of economy.
GROW OR DIE
In this economy, it’s GROW OR DIE.
It’s very hard to just stand still.
And in general, it’s best to be fast.
If your business is dying and you’re not doing anything actively or effectively in turning it around, best to just accelerate the business failure and do damage control on your losses.
If your intent is to grow, find a way to accelerate the process and be aggressive as possible to make that happen.
Time is incredibly expensive right now. Use it wisely.